The applicant of this application previously proposed in Japanese laid open (unexamined) patent publication No. Hei 9-273,051 a knitting method in which front and back bodies and sleeves which are all knitted in the form of a tube are joined on the flat knitting machine so that the need for a sewing process, such as linking, can be eliminated or relieved. The publication discloses, as shown in FIGS. 1 to 3 (FIG. 1 is a diagram showing a knit clothing arranged on a flat knitting machine for the knitting; FIG. 2-A is a front view of a right half of a sweater 1 and FIG. 2-B is a rear view of the same; and FIG. 3 is a diagram showing the sweater 1 of FIG. 2 opened out along a shoulder line) the knitting method in which when the sleeves 4, 14 knitted in the form of a tube are joined to the front body 2a and the back body 2b which are knitted on a front needle bed and a back needle bed, respectively, and then the stitches in final courses of the front and back bodies 2a, 2b are joined in the shoulder, to knit the knit clothing with the sleeves 4, 14 and the front and back bodies 2a, 2b joined together, the front body 2a is knitted longer than the back body 2b in the shoulder and thereby the joining line 19 along which the front body 2a and the back body 2b are joined is formed at a place apart from the normal shoulder line 15 toward the back body, so as to allow knit clothing to have a variety of silhouettes without being restricted by the shoulder line 15.
In the knitting method of Japanese laid-open (unexamined) patent publication No. Hei 9-273,051, with the start of the sleeve 4 knitted in the direction indicated by the arrow Z in FIG. 3 being joined to the bodies 2a, 2b, the joining proceeds while the stitches of the next course are formed in each of the bodies 2a, 2b and the sleeve 4. However, in the final region W of the sleeve 4, the stitches of the next course are formed only in the front body 2a, and the sleeve 4 is joined to the front body 2a without any stitches being formed in the sleeve 4. Thus, during the joining of the sleeve to the front body 2a, the transferring of the stitches in the region W is repeated without any new stitches being formed in that region. Because of this, there is a possible yarn breakage when a weak knitting yarn is used for the knitting or when the knitting is performed with a knitting machine having fine gauges requiring the increased number of transferring.
In view of the disadvantages above, the present invention is intended to disclose an improved knitting method for knitting a knit clothing of the silhouettes disclosed by the above-noted publication of JP Laid-open (unexamined) patent publication No. Hei 9-273,051, while avoiding a possible yarn breakage even when a weak yarn is used for the knitting or when the knitting is performed with a knitting machine having fine gauges.